Open & Transparent? NO! Closed & Opaque

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

When you're in a constant state of lying, deceiving, double-talking and abusing your power, you can't be bothered with document requests confirming your misdeeds, even though deleting stuff and disobeying subpoenas is so practiced it's instinctive.

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White House office to delete its FOIA regulationsGregory Korte, USA TODAY2 days agoFacebookTwitterGoogle Plusmore

Mark Wilson, Getty Images

Melting snow and barricades sit in front of the White House on March 12, 2015, in Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON — The White House is removing a federal regulation that subjects its Office of Administration to the Freedom of Information Act, making official a policy under Presidents Bush and Obama to reject requests for records to that office.

The White House said the cleanup of FOIA regulations is consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law. The office handles, among other things, White House record-keeping duties like the archiving of e-mails.

But the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day and during a national debate over the preservation of Obama administration records. It's also Sunshine Week, an effort by news organizations and watchdog groups to highlight issues of government transparency.

"The irony of this being Sunshine Week is not lost on me," said Anne Weismann of the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.

"It is completely out of step with the president's supposed commitment to transparency," she said. "That is a critical office, especially if you want to know, for example, how the White House is dealing with e-mail."

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Unlike other offices within the White House, which were always exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, the Office of Administration responded to FOIA requests for 30 years. Until the Obama administration, watchdog groups on the left and the right used records from the office to shed light on how the White House works.

"This is an office that operated under the FOIA for 30 years, and when it became politically inconvenient, they decided they weren't subject to the Freedom of Information Act any more," said Tom Fitton of the conservative Judicial Watch.

That happened late in the Bush administration, when CREW sued over e-mails deleted by the White House — as many as 22 million of them, by one accounting. The White House at first began to comply with that request, but then reversed course.

"The government made an argument in an effort to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the lawsuit in order to stop the archiving of White House e-mails," said Tom Blanton, the director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has used similar requests to shed light on foreign policy decisions.

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In 2009, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the Office of Administration was not subject to the FOIA, "because it performs only operational and administrative tasks in support of the president and his staff and therefore, under our precedent, lacks substantial independent authority."

The appeals court ruled that the White House was required to archive the e-mails, but not release them under the FOIA. Instead, White House e-mails must be released under the Presidential Records Act — but not until at least five years after the end of the administration.

In a notice to be published in Tuesday'sFederal Register the White House says it's removing regulations on how the Office of Administration complies with Freedom of Information Act Requests based on "well-settled legal interpretations."

The rule change means that there will no longer be a formal process for the public to request that the White House voluntarily disclose records as part of what's known as a "discretionary disclosure." Records released by the Office of Administration voluntarily include White House visitor logs and the recipe for beer brewed at the White House.

"You have a president who comes in and says, I'm committed to transparency and agencies should make discretionary disclosures whenever possible, but he's not applying that to his own White House," Weismann said.

The White House did not explain why it waited nearly six years to formally acknowledge the court ruling in its regulations.

Blanton said the outdated regulation is part of a larger problem of outdated FOIA regulations: Most federal agencies haven't updated their rules to take into account changes in law, many of which benefit requesters.

White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said the administration remains committed "to work towards unprecedented openness in government."

"Over the past six years, federal agencies have gone to great efforts to make government more transparent and more accessible than ever, including by making more information available to the public via our Open Government initiative and improving the FOIA process," she said.

In the notice to be published Tuesday, the White House said it was not allowing a 30-day public comment period, and so the rule will be final.

"It's a little tone deaf to do this on Sunshine Week, even if it's an administrative housecleaning," said Rick Blum, coordinator of the Sunshine in Government initiative for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The bigger issue, Blum said, is that the Office of Administration is itself responsible for presidential record-keeping. Given the controversy over former secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's use of a personal e-mail account to conduct official business, there ought to be more scrutiny of record-keeping practices, he said.

"I think what we've all learned n in the last few weeks is the person who creates a record — whether it's running a program or writing an e-mail — is the one who gets to decide whether it's an official record," Blum said. "And there ought to be another set of eyes on that. That's the essential problem."

Follow @gregorykorte on Twitter.

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[Dugout DickStone]

Pretty dick move to do it during Freedom of Information Day.

[Dugout DickStone]

The slowest response to FOIA inquiries, the most denials of FOIA inquiries.  Also the most anti whistle blower administration in modern American history.

It certainly reads like Bush liked that game too though.

[Institutional Control]

The slowest response to FOIA inquiries, the most denials of FOIA inquiries.  Also the most anti whistle blower administration in modern American history.

It certainly reads like Bush liked that game too though.

BIGOT!

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

I take it there are a bunch of Obama emails to hdr22.

[renocat]

2008, Obama said he was going to be the most transparent President ever.  I thought it was a crock then, and now he is about as transparent a brick wall.  Uncle Obama wants to screw you AMERICA.  Make up his own damn laws like Putin. How many crooked government lawyers will be unleashed when he leaves and how many of them making these judgment will be judges? 

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

Fannie and Freddie now secret government enterprises.

[Fake Sugar Dick (WARNING, NOT THE REAL SUGAR DICK!)]

The egregiously deliberate bullshit campaign aside (which had the left and the naive peeing down their legs), has there ever been a more pathetic group of "our ball, our rules" twerps in the history of anything? 

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

Finally a bipartisan attack against Obama's secret war on US business.

An Asian trade deal being negotiated in secret by the administration would let an international tribunal overrule state and federal laws to help foreign firms, a new issue congressional and legal opponents are raising in hopes of slowing the race for passage.

"It is really worrisome," said top House Ways and Means Committee Democrat Rep. Sandy Levin. "Countries do not want to give away their jurisdiction away to some arbitrary panel," he added.

At issue is the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty and a provision called "Investor-State Dispute Settlement," or ISDS, that would let foreign firms challenge U.S. laws, potentially overruling those laws and resulting in fines to be paid by taxpayers. The provisions are becoming common in some trade deals between other nations.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new-trade-warning-international-tribunal-could-junk-u.s.-laws-to-help-foreign-firms/article/2564133

[renocat]

Secret negotiation by haplass Obama concern me.  He thinks we should let him have carte blanche because he is so intelligent.  He is a globalist who wants us to be a second class state in the Grand WorldUnion, a long time goal of elitist socialists.